The Way Out of Loneliness

Around the time I made that scary and glorious leap to sobriety, I remember one night, my husband was doing his bicycle commute 14 miles home from Nike— along the Sunset Highway, past Hoyt Arboretum as he made his way over the hills in the pitch dark—and I imagined myself getting a call from the hospital that he’d been hit by a car. Who would I call for support, I wondered? I honestly didn’t know.

When I started drinking and smoking pot, I did it to fit in. After my father’s sudden and tragic death when I turned 21, it turned into a way to not feel my grief. That fast-tracked the substance abuse problems that lasted for the next two decades.

Once I transitioned from the restaurant industry to a teaching career, and then working in tech, my substance use/abuse didn’t help me fit in like it had in the first part of my life. Instead, it’s what motivated me to isolate myself in order to protect my professional reputation.

I had been hiding my true self at work for years, because I didn’t want people to know that I waited all week to get high all weekend.

I didn’t want my colleagues to know that when I traveled for work, I only had one or two drinks at dinner, and then excused myself to my hotel room— not to get a good night’s sleep, but so I could drink two or three more in solitude.

Why? Because I was afraid of how quickly my filters turned off when I got drunk. I’d gossip, talk smack about my boss, and acting stupid—like the time I got drunk on tequila at an afternoon office celebration, and ended up pretending like I was swimming on the floor, God knows why.

Oh yeah, and I didn’t want them to know that I craved getting drunk.

For me, what started as a way to fit in, had morphed into something that felt shameful and isolating.

It only makes sense that when all of a sudden I wasn’t drinking booze or smoking weed, I still felt insecure, even unloveable.

I’d never had proof that I could be loveable just as me. I hadn’t been my true authentic self for years, and wasn’t even sure what that was.

I’m a lifelong learner, and my sobriety was vitally important to me. It didn’t occur to me to do any kind of recovery program because I didn’t consider myself to be an alcoholic, but I followed my intuition into what felt like full-time personal development.

What started as an intense focus on myself, gradually wend its way to a focus on relationships.

After a failed attempt to make friends through Instagram, I realized that we were all pretty bad at knowing how to hang out with each other. How do you build friendships from scratch, when all you have in common is sobriety, and your previous friendships were based on similar levels of substance use (as in, I like hanging out with you because we can get f*cked up together)?

I had a head start on learning about relationships, and how we learn and change. I have a M.Ed, and served as the president of my Toastmasters club. Now my shelves are filling up with books on female friendships and authentic relationships. I’m in process of being certified as an Authentic Relating facilitator, and have been through two other facilitation training programs focused on social health and transformational experiences. Basically, it’s been like a self-crafted additional degree in helping others build relationships and transform their lives.

As for my personal life— if I needed to make that phone call to ask someone for help, I know plenty of folks who would be there for me.

Now it’s my turn to offer what I’ve been learning to you. I’m not perfect, but I have transformed (and continue to transform) my own life, and have already been helping others to do the same.

If any of my story rings true for you, know that you aren’t alone, it’s just that no one talks about it.

In my next post, I’ll share one of the ways of thinking that has shifted how I show up in relationships now that I’m sober.